I will be the first to admit that I prefer Windows over Mac OS any day. Besides being a slight Microsoft fanboy, I do prefer Windows because it meets all of my software and gaming needs, but I digress. In any case, there are still some unfortunate situations when I need to have access to Mac OS.
Luckily, I’ll show you an easy way on how to install Mac OS X Yosemite on any pc, regardless of the hardware that you currently have installed (even if it is an AMD CPU). Doing this will require a specially modified version of Yosemite called Yosemite-zone.dmg. With a quick Google search, you should be able to find it. As far as performance, I did not encounter any issues. It ran surprisingly smooth even before setting up Multi-beast. Of course, ymmv.
What You Will Need:
- Yosemite-zone.dmg
- Transmac (Free 15day Trial)
- 8GB USB
- A Spare Hard-drive
Step 1: Format GPT
The first thing that you need to do is restore the Yosemite-zone.dmg image to the USB. Open transmac, and right click on your USB. First, select the option to format for Mac (this will change the boot record from MBR to GPT). Once it completes, select the option to restore the disk image to the USB. It will take about 10 minutes to restore the image. Finally, right click** the hard drive**_ _that you want to install Mac OS to choose the option to format for Mac. Keep in mind that you will need a separate hard drive for the Mac OS installation. You will not be able to solely format one partition.
Step 2: Bios
Before you boot from your USB, go into your bios settings. This part can get a little complicated depending on your hardware. Make sure that you have secure boot disabled and Vt-D. Also, when you choose boot devices, make sure your USB is not booting with Eefi. Fortunately, I did not have to change anything and kept my bios to the default settings.
Step 3: Boot from USB
Now boot from the USB. You should see a boot loader screen that will prompt you with what operating system/hard drive to boot with. At the bottom of the screen, you can enter boot flags. If you are using an AMD CPU type in “/amd”, or “/amd32” or “/amd64”. If you run intro trouble during installation, check out these other boot flags that you can use. If you don’t need to type in anything, simply choose Yosemite from the selection window.
Step 4: Setup
From this point, you will be taken through the standard Mac OS setup. If you already set up your drive in Windows using TransMac, than you can just skip to the installation. If not, make sure to go into Disk Utility and format your desired hard drive. The installation should take about 16 minutes. Once it’s done it will reboot your PC. Remember to reboot from the hard drive Mac OS is installed on (if that fails, try rebooting from the USB again).
Step 5: The Final Steps
From this point, you can go through the normal setup process for Mac OS. As far as compatibility, all my existing hardware worked fine with Mac OS. This included speakers and internet. Of course, you can always install MultiBeast to add any post secondary drivers and optimizations.